


The Fairy Feller's Tithe

by BrooklynBugleBoy



Series: Seventh Son of Rhye [1]
Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: (I seriously was and can't believe it's common enough to be a tag)., Blood, Changelings, Demon Baby, Fae & Fairies, Faeries Made Them Do It, Fairies Are Scary, Gore, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, I Was Drunk When I Wrote This, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Misgendering, Monsters, Multi, Mythology - Freeform, Polyamory, Pregnancy, Scary Fairytales, Seeing Stones, Seelie Court, Stillbirth, They love their weird demon child, Trans Male Character, Trans Pregnancy, Trans Roger, Unseelie Court, Wings, faerie - Freeform, tithe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-10 00:35:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17415599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrooklynBugleBoy/pseuds/BrooklynBugleBoy
Summary: "Mr. Taylor, surely you've noticed that your son is... different?"Roger Taylor leaned back in the uncomfortable swivel chair, legs loosely crossed and a lit cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. "Nope.""...He talks to flowers, Mr. Taylor.""No," He rolled his eyes. "You've got to stop with all these bloody generalizations. Morgan talks to daffodils. Peonies are rude and Petunias are as well, when planted in such a negative environment. Daffodils are alright though."The teacher looked dumbstruck."Look, has he eaten anyone yet? Is he falling behind in class? No?" She slowly shook her head. "Then what's the issue, dear?"*In which Roger's son is a Changeling and Queen's first groupie.(This weird one-shot I wasn't going to post but @universesvisiting convinced me). :D





	The Fairy Feller's Tithe

**Author's Note:**

> Note: This is not real and none of this happened. This thing is so weird, I have no idea why my drunk brain likes Mythology so much. 
> 
> Song featured is Changeling Child by Heather Dale.

  
_“One standard element of fairy lore is the idea of a tithe, usually a sacrifice of a human…”_

-Elizabeth Genco

  
_"The wind blows low and mournful_  
_Through the Strath of Dalnacreich…”_

  
Roger Taylor's daughter was stillborn. 

Tiny and red, shrunken and silent, she never cried nor took a single breath in this world.

He had given birth too early, lying in a grassy ditch in the middle of nowhere, near to where his car had finally broken down.

This was several years before his physical transition, before the hormones and surgery, back when he was still called… _another name_ instead of Roger.

Back when he'd still looked like a _her_ , only a few months after he'd fled from his messy broken family, for not being able to accept a son where they'd thought they had a daughter. He hadn't known what to do when the labor pains started, or even what to do about the pregnancy in general, he'd just sunk to the ground and cried.

It was so early. Too early. 

He knew that she would be born as sick as the way she had come into existence, but he hadn’t realized that it would steal her breath long before she had any to give.

He named her Holly, after the resplendent tree he saw above them while he bled out into the grass. 

There was something wrong with him, something had torn inside, ruptured. He wouldn't stop bleeding.

But suddenly, all at once, it wasn't a cause for concern anymore.

Roger hadn't tried to staunch it or fight the inevitable, he had simply lied back against the dewy softness of the grass, his dead daughter cradled in his arms, watching as the boughs of the holly tree waved above them, shaking those branches ripe with round red glossy berries, they reminded him of the candied sort, the kind he and Clare used to share at tea-parties.

Those boughs bent too and fro, as if the gentle limbs were trying to shield them. Or perhaps wave a somber goodbye.

It brought a smile to his chapped lips, he could taste the blood. 

The last things he saw before losing consciousness were the mushrooms, white and corpulent, tiny umbrellas shooting up from the wet dirt. He was lying in a circle of them, and was almost certain that they hadn't been there before. It was as if they had sprung up out of thin air. _Magic. Old magic._ He hadn't known about fairy rings then. Or about the ancient magic held within their depths, as this was a time when he hadn't believed in the magic of the world. When the only fairies he knew of were the sugar-coated kind made by Disney. 

He would soon learn otherwise. 

He would learn why fairies were so often spun as the villains in the old stories, why they were once something to be afraid of.

Why they still were.

  
-X-

  
_"Where once there lived a woman_  
_Who would a mother be.”_

  
_-_ X-

  
He heard a baby's wailing, plaintive and needy.

Felt a small mouth with sharp teeth rooting at his breast. But his heavy eyes did not open, he only felt the lingering caress of a loving hand, the smell of dank green things that grow and an unknown weight compressing his chest. A good weight, not like the body of his daughter, which had been so light and airy that it was as if it had belonged to a ghost, the top of a meringue pie, a whipping cream that made clouds of no substance. It was as though he had been cradling a doll.

The new thing on his chest was heavy, moving and very much _alive._

He heard with ears that wouldn't understand then, a promise in the old tongue of a deal with the foolish one who had brought blood and a tithe into the fairy circle, as well a long trying life for them both. 

Then Roger Taylor was gone once more. 

  
-X-

  
_"For twelve long years a good man's wife_  
_but ne'er the cradle filled…”_

  
-X-

  
When he awoke next, it was to the kind eyes of a young nurse, taking his vitals with a smile. She had a thin sheen of pink gloss on her lips and a swing in her hips, one that his gaze just couldn't help but follow. 

“Hello there, _Sleeping Beauty!_ You’ve been asleep for quite awhile, dearie. We were afraid we'd never see those beautiful eyes open up again." A little laugh. "Not quite like your son's of course, but still just as lovely. Have you see the _Alexandria’s Genesis?"_  

Roger just blinked at her, completely struck dumb by the situation.

"Oh don't worry, we had Dr. Calloway take a look at them and he says they're fine. It’s not truly _Alexandria’s,_ that’s an old urban myth. Your baby boy just has the most wonderful eyes, _Elizabeth Taylor_ eyes. So blue they look violet.” She tugged a blue pen out of her mass of braids and scrawled something down on a pad, before her eyes brightened up and she rushed to the other side of the bed to push a nearby bassinet even closer. "Goodness me, you're probably worried to death about your little guy! He's alright, healthy as can be, even got checked over in the NICU this morning. Would you like to hold him?" 

Without waiting for Roger's response, she simply scooped up and deposited the squealing infant into his thin arms. 

He was such a beautiful baby. 

He looked almost like a _cherub_ , a fat little angel baby. The kind of infant who's visage belonged at the Sistine Chapel, and not burbling happily in Roger’s noodle arms. Then, all at once, he saw the violet that the nurse had been talking about, the boy's colossal irises were periwinkle in color, though he couldn’t see a hint of any blue, only the purple that should have been impossible. They were almost bewitching to look at for too long, a kaleidoscope or a puzzle.

Roger shifted the baby to get more comfortable and that was all the prompting the infant needed for that little pink mouth to latch on to a nipple and suckle deeply. 

Those lovely eyes never left his. There was something swimming about in those depths and Roger just couldn’t put his finger on it.

"He's beautiful." _Incandescent. Marvelous._

Roger didn't know what else to say, the little boy's hair was the color of sable, of whorls of ink dripped onto a fresh page of parchment, his porcelain button-nose was tiny and slightly upturned, his big eyes were almond-shaped and almost startling in their intensity, his pale ears were even pointed, dramatically so. It was as if Puck himself had been presented to Roger in all his mischievous glory. 

"But he isn't mine." 

The young drummer whimpered, looking up at the kind nurse with hot tears brimming in his cornflower blue eyes. As his thoughts turned to his poor stillborn little daughter, come into the world far too early, who would never know life.

This precious little otherworldly boy was not his child. 

That was clearly not what the girl had expected to hear. Her eyes widened, "What are you talking about?" 

The barely-there teenager swallowed roughly, it felt like inhaling glass by the handful. "Where is my daughter? The baby I was holding when they brought me here? She was so little..." A broken sob. "I know she's dead, _stillborn_. I was only twenty-something weeks. _Early.”_ The tears flowed unheeded then, splattering down onto the angelic little boy who wasn't his. Even knowing the truth, Roger didn't want to let him go. The baby seemed to hold him in the same esteem, for when he shifted to lay the infant back into his cradle, the child's cherubic facade cracked down the middle and he began to wail. 

An unearthly unholy sound that quickly had Roger holding the desperate babe close once more, if to silence him. It was like his very ears were bleeding. 

"Miss, you're confused. This is the baby they found you with, there was no one else for miles. This is your son, your very healthy son." 

The baby was suckling at his nipple once more, milk dribbling down his rounded chin and purple eyes still fixated on Roger's swollen tear-streaked face. 

"He can't be..." Rog knew what he saw and he knew without a doubt that this was no twenty-something week old premature baby. He was too big, too _healthy…_

"He is." 

The sweet nurse brushed an errant clump of blonde hair out of his eyes and smiled, a little uncertain this time. "It must've been so awful and scary, giving birth all alone like that." Sympathy burned like white sage in those round eyes. "Don't worry, your memories will come back to you in time, or maybe it's best to let them stay gone for now. You've got this lovely little guy to look after you." The baby seemed to burble happily in agreement, still suckling away ferociously at the pink puckered skin. 

Roger knew what he saw, his memories weren't hampered by blood loss or fear. But he was also inherently selfish, as much as any grieving soul, he saw the beautiful baby in his arms and decided he wanted the child. He wanted that baby more than anything, so he smiled and played along. Never forgetting about Holly, but letting his heart grow big enough to accommodate them both. 

The darling baby wasn't hard to love anyway, as he gave Rog a gummy smile to warm up his chest, and left an odd vodka burn behind.

"Have you picked out any names?" 

"Morrigan." He whispered, almost like a question as he rubbed at those pointed ears, soft as down. “ _Morrigan Gwenonwy Taylor._ ” _No Meddows, he wouldn’t give a child that name, not ever. His father’s name. His sister’s name. His own name. But not his son’s._

The girl scribbled it down and looked up inquisitively. “ _Gwenonwy?_ I’ve never heard that before, what does it mean?”

A soft mewling sounded from the baby, finally sated, his sweaty face buried in Roger's chest. “It’s the Welsh name of a flower, also called a _lily of the valley.”_

“Ah!” She smiled. “That’s so sweet… and _Morrigan?”_

He didn’t answer her, far too afraid of being right.

  
-X-

  
_"A mother of a changeling child from 'neath the fairy hill…”_

  
_-_ X-

  
Morgan’s first word was _'Da'_ and it happened while his father was cleaning up their kitchenette one evening. 

Roger was so surprised by the sound, that he slipped in the melted ice chips from the fridge that he’d never picked up _(yes, he was a lazy arsehole, but who gave a shit?)_ and banged his bony ass hard on the cheap tile. That spot smarted for days afterward. 

Maybe he wouldn't have been so taken aback if Morgan hadn't been only _six days old_ at the time.

The little boy standing up on those round chubby legs in his pink bassinet and only sitting down and sobbing brokenly once he heard his beloved father cry out in pain. Ass meeting hard tile tended to do that to a person. The moaning drummer had to practically crawl over to comfort his baby, who practically went ballistic anytime Roger was unhappy or too far away.

Morgan was the sweetest and strangest child in the world, but Roger loved him wholeheartedly. 

 _"Da! Da! Da!"_ So fucking anguished, as if the blonde had impaled himself instead of falling on his very cushioned bum. 

“Oh, you little beast, Daddy's okay! See, Daddy's _okay!"_

He forced a smile and leaned up to press a whiskery kiss to his son's little furrowed squishy forehead. Bright lavender eyes turned his way almost instantly and Rog found his face seized by a pair of small pudgy hands. As if being inspected up close, turned this way and that. Gently looked over by a pair of far-too-old eyes in a cherubic newborn's guise. 

" _Da."_ Now his voice was soothed, suddenly tired as he curled up on his side and sank into a fitful sleep, suitably calmed now that Roger was close by and relatively unharmed. 

"I love you too, my little magician.” 

A soft kiss to his baby's pitch-colored fuzzy temple was all the lullaby Morgan ever needed in those early days. 

  
-X-

  
“ _She traveled to the standing stones_  
_And crossed into the green.”_

  
_-_ X-

  
His baby boy was almost four years old, when Roger realized that there was a word for what Morgan was. 

A _Changeling._

A faerie child left in the place of a human infant, whether it be through mischief or well-meaning intent, the stories differed vastly and Roger himself still wasn't certain. ( _Part of him still thought he was just crazy, or that there was something wrong with his child, besides the way that Morgan had come into his life)._ All he knew for sure, was that whatever his little magician was, it certainly wasn't ordinary, and maybe not even _human._

And that was _okay._

Because Rog still loved his son, no matter what. 

"Daddy!" 

His sable-haired imp shrieked with delight, running around in the grass around the playground, little feet bare as he was wont to have them. It was one of their points of deepest contention, Morgan’s aversion towards shoes.

The years had only made him odder, but it was an endearing sort of odd that made him a horde of friends wherever he went. He would sing songs that Roger couldn't understand as he played and danced around in the dew-damp grass in the fresh morning air. Sometimes he would find things unbearably sad whilst others were laughing and vice-versa. 

The single-father saw an ancientness in his small child's eyes. 

His boy’s hair would grow faster than that of normal children, always looking wet and curling up the at the ends while the rest appeared to stay damp, and it became easier to just keep it in a long ponytail and chop off the ends every so often.

Morgan would talk to trees and flowers and animals, sometimes even to things his father couldn't see. The little boy started to go on long walks throughout the deep forests that surrounded their tiny Truro home, and wouldn't come back for hours upon hours at a time. 

“There’s my little magic-maker!“ 

Rog would run and scoop up his baby in one go, blowing a wet raspberry into his soft round tummy, something that had the little imp squealing with delight and practically dissolving in his grip. 

During a daily bath, in which a grumbling Roger had to scrub all the long day's dirt and grime off of his giggling son, finding twisty twigs and all manner of debris stuck in only God knows where. He discovered the strange sloping markings on his son's back, long and spindly slashes, deep and black like scours in the earth. 

Those certainly had _not_ been there before, his hands fell limply down to splash into the water.

 _"Morgan!"_  

He'd gasped, eyes too-bright with worry. "What are _these?!"_

His hands had flailed uselessly in the dead air, fluttering over the burn marks with abject horror and no idea of what to do about them. It was almost as if his child was burning up from the inside, like he had a fever of some sort.

If Roger neared too close, his hands would ache as though they were being singed by a hellfire within the little boy’s skin. He didn't know how to fix it, how to help. _He didn't even know what the fuck was going on!_

Suffice to say, his beautiful boy was constantly putting him in those sorts of situations. _(Other parents had to deal with colds and temper tantrums, while Roger had found his son eating a bird once. A living bird that was trying to escape. ...it hadn't)._

But his strange child had simply looked at him askance, a smile twitching to life in the corners of his curled pixie mouth. As if the painfully oozing fiery slits were nothing to be worried about, as if they had always been there.

"Silly Daddy!" His baby boy had just giggled, splashing around in the water and kicking his chubby legs to and fro. "Those are just my _wings."_ Speaking slowly, as if Roger had recently gone soft in the head. 

Wings?

_Wings._

_Holy fucking shit._

Okay, so his son had wings. _Faerie wings_ , because he was a faerie child. Because that was apparently a real thing. He was raising a child who had jumped out of a book of Grimm’s fairytales. _Fucking hell._

Okay, Rog could deal with that. Oh yeah. He could totally deal with that. That was why he was nearly hyperventilating into his shaking hands. Definitely dealing with it. Yet another lovely reminder that his son wasn't actually his own. He really loved those reminders. 

As if compelled by something beyond them, beyond the walls of their tiny bathroom, with its stained tile, soap-scum walls and race car curtains, Morrigan stood and upturned his face to the hidden sky, raising up his pudgy arms like he was going to use them to take flight alone and unfurled his wings. The cavernous slits tore open, further exposing ruddy muscle and taut white sinew hidden beneath.

While Roger gasped at the torrent of paint-red blood that gushed from his child's back unfettered.

It was terrifying, yes, _(in any other situation he would have called a sodding ambulance)_ but the wings were something else. 

They _shone._

They were the brightest things that Roger had ever seen, like every stupid childhood moment of staring into the sun, the bluest portion of a flame and an unexpected camera flash all rolled into one.

He had to look away or risk being blinded. And his eyes would still ache for days afterward. Little Morgan seemed to realize that the sight of his wings in their full resplendent state was hurting his father, evident by his trembling and calloused drummer’s hands shielding his blue eyes beginning to blister.

So the boy quickly dimmed them, _because of course that was possible_ , and shuffled forwards with worry in his periwinkle eyes.

But being a four-year-old child, despite all his strange and otherworldliness, the first thing he did was smash his porcelain doll shin against the lip of the tub. 

The wail he let out was deafening and Roger instantly felt like his heart had been torn from his chest, as an added bonus to the reactive partial deafness. 

His baby so rarely cried when around him, the same could not be said for anyone else the charming little imp came into contact with, but it was always true for Rog. So any expression of hurt or sadness from his child sent him into a tailspin. 

“Morgan!" 

Blinding light be damned, Roger held out his arms and that was all the invitation his son ever needed to fling himself into them. Nestled just above his beating heart, right where he belonged.

The wings looked like just-blown glass when dimmed, still warm, shining in geometric fractals of every color imaginable, but when they brushed against Roger's arms, they were as soft as lamb's wool. Sturdy too, if the way they'd knocked over three bottles of shampoo and the toilet roll dispenser were any sort of indication. _Magic, man. Magic._

"I love you, Daddy. I’m so _sorry."_ Fat tears were still rolling down his boy’s face and once again, Rog still didn't know how to make it all better. _Father of the Year_ award, right here. 

"Sorry for what, little man? You didn't do anything wrong." 

Tiny hands scrabbled for purchase as they snagged his own, those peculiar eyes inspecting the burns before pressing his little pouted lips to the mangled skin, his long pink tongue rubbed away at the dead flesh until there was nothing left but the pink supple tissue beneath. New and unblemished by long life's toils.

Morgan looked up eagerly, a piece of dead skin flaked and stuck to the corner of his mouth, blood and fluids sticky on his lips and back, _alien_ eyes unblinking.

"Better, Daddy?" 

"Yeah, baby boy." Roger’s voice was quiet, almost trembling, but he smiled at his son reassuringly. "A lot better." 

The return of a brightly shining grin was well-worth the lie. 

He tucked his clean-smelling and freshly-washed little boy into bed that night, after bandaging up his deep cuts and the slits that dug far into his back, the very best he could. Roger lay half-curled around him, fingers rubbing at the vibrating wings pinned delicately between them, like a beautiful butterfly trapped in a glass casing. 

  
-X-

  
_“Where all the host of elven folk_  
_were dancing there unseen.”_

  
_-_ X-

  
"And then I'll take you dancing in the glen, and..." 

Roger smiled at the sight of his little boy, curled around a red twisty top, a tin soldier and a stuffed bear. Talking to them as if they were real and just as alive as the both of them, breathing in the air and sunshine.

The blonde got down on his hands and knees and crawled over, eager to join in the game, eager to see his child playing make-believe just like any other. "What are you doing, baby?" His voice was warm and his touch gentle as he rolled the little boy onto his back, to blink up at the summer's sun.

"Talking to _Bapuji, Pa_ and _Brimi_ , You’re going to marry them when I'm big." 

The drummer huffed a soft laugh and dragged his little boy closer, to blow a gentle raspberry into his soft tummy and giggle along with him. To find pure mirth in his child's innocent dreams. “I'm going to marry a bauble, an infantryman and a toy bear?" Just barely managing to hide his snicker with a well-placed palm. 

That had Morgan laughing along for a wholly different reason. 

"No, Daddy! Those are just outside gifts for them! Their special stones are inside..." 

He pressed a little finger into the soft tum of the bear, recently re-stitched up the side with clumsy knots, moved the gun of the toy soldier to expose a hole in his middle, and the twisty handle that popped off the red top, revealing a polished green stone inside with a big hole in the middle. A special stone. An oathing stone, a seeing stone, a way to see into his world and accept him for who he was.

But Roger knew none of that at the time, he had barely come to the realization that his son wasn’t quite like any other. So it had simply been a pretty rock, something sweet to look at.

"That's nice, baby. How do you know their names?" Roger yawned, basking in the warm light like a cold-blooded lizard sunning itself on a rock. Only partially listening, so he hadn't understood the weight of his child's final words. 

“Those aren’t their _real_ names, just what I call them, _my three other daddies._ I dream about them lots and lots. Bapuji is really sad and lonely all by himself, so you have to find him soon, he writes songs for you to play on your drums.” The small boy used his mouth to mimic the sound of hitting a high-hat, obscenely well. “Pa can make stuff out of anything, like magic, and he likes music too! So does Brimi! He can make music just like you do, Daddy! You guys are gonna make the prettiest music in the whole world, and we’re all gonna be a family.” A promise. 

“Maybe then you won’t be so lonely anymore.”

Roger’s brow furrowed. “I’m not lonely, little beast. ….And you don’t _have_ three other Dads?” _You don’t need them._

_…Am I not enough?_

“I worry about you, Daddy.” He sighed in a way that was far beyond his years and winked with that mischievous grin of his. “And I don’t have them yet, but you’ll see. You’ll find them soon.”

  
-X-

  
" _Through the night she bargained_  
_with the Queen of fairies all_  
_who sent her home at dawning with a babe beneath her shawl.”_

  
_-_ X-

  
_"Morrigan!"_

Roger was screaming as he ran through the same forest, the same winding path he had traversed years previously, night had long fallen across the moors, and yet Morgan still hadn't come home.

His six-year-old son hadn't been home for hours and Rog just _knew_ something was horribly wrong, like finding water with a dowsing rod.

So he ran, through the old rotted trees and brambles that tore at his jeans and old hoodie, tripping on twisted roots that jutted up from the ground like mummified fingers reaching up from the grave. The earth was wet and moist, endeavoring to sink and swallow him up at every turn. His whole lower body was muddied from previous falls and trips, his palms near cut to ribbons. Tears streaked down his cheeks, chilled in the night air and he just kept on screaming, eyes straining frantically in the dark. He should have grabbed his glasses.

He was losing heart, desperation making his head throb, and was near to collapsing where he stood, but the appearance of a little iridescent light changed all that. 

A _will o' the wisp_ had appeared on the horizon, bouncing along in the distance. The soft glowing blue light trying guide him along, he knew the creature from the myths he'd read about while researching the origins of his son.

They were supposed to lead weary travelers to their fate, a fate that was usually  _death_ more often than not. But he'd had nothing else to lose. He had to find his child. His still-beating heart torn from his chest.

So he'd followed the bursts of faerie light that guided him through the ever-growing darkness. 

The wisps led him to a grassy knoll, topped by a halo of wind-wrought standing stones, jagged in the way they jutted from the ground like broken teeth.

His Morgan was standing on the precipice of falling, dancing as carefree as always, spinning with myriads of creatures unseen.

His twirling bare feet edging closer and closer to entering the circle of standing stones. Of crossing into the green to where his people were waiting, the fair folk had been waiting for their son to come home for so long that they'd enticed the child into following, bewitching him with the songs that he hadn't heard in years. Veritable Pied Pipers stealing his son away.  

Even if meant leaving Roger behind forever. 

_"No!"_

The young man shrieked, running as fast as his legs could carry him. Tearing out fistfuls of dirt and earth as he climbed the hill, desperation coloring every movement he made. If the fair folk were going to take back his child, then by God, Roger was going with them. He'd rather be trapped in their world for all eternity, then spend a single day without Morgan present in his. 

" _Morgan!"_ Rog's voice held all a parent's agony within its depths.

But the little boy did not come, he was laughing, playing and going home.

The invisible fair folk guided him along with gentle hands, tossing back his long hair, rubbing at his rosy cheeks. Roger was stricken, his child had _never_  blatantly disobeyed him like that, let alone refuse to come when the blonde was sobbing where he stood. 

“ _Morgie, little magic-maker, please!"_

Nothing was working anymore, not even the nickname Roger had been using since the day he first held Morgan close to his chest and loved him with all his heart.

He was going to lose his baby. He was going to lose his baby boy. 

Perhaps that single destructive burning thought was enough to propel him faster than anything else would, because the thin blonde raced towards his son in record time, dragging the squirming baby away and into his arms, fighting against the dozen clawed hands that grabbed him unseen. 

"No! No! You can't have him, he's mine! You can't take him yet! Please, no! _He's my son!"_

The tiny boy started to scream, because Rog too was screaming at the top of his lungs, as deep bloody scratches formed on his fair skin, talons digging into his flesh and viciously throwing him this way and that. He couldn't fight against something he couldn't _see._

He couldn't protect his only son from the monsters that would soon fuel Morgan’s nightmares and try to steal him away when night fell.

The child's wings were vibrating frantically beneath his clothing, something they only did when he was scared and it was all the drummer could do to run away from that clearing.

The war songs of the fey folk grinding like a mortar and pestle on the insides of his ears. 

  
-X-

  
“ _How their home was joyful_  
_with a son to call their own.”_

  
_-_ X-

  
Roger carried his sleepy son off the busy night-bus and out into the lively streets of London. 

The night at the standing stones had been the final straw for Roger, as the fair folk were obviously far too strong in Truro. His baby was in far more danger of being spirited away to his old home there. So, London seemed like the most opportune choice.

"Daddy, where are we?"

His baby boy yawned, rubbing at his eyes with a pair of closed chubby fists. Rog's warm hand found a place of crowning glory, rubbing small circles into the damp back of his son's sleep shirt, thumb carding over the familiar wing bulges. 

"Our new home, little magician: _London.”_

  
-X-

  
“ _But soon they saw the years that passed_  
_would never make him grow.”_

-X-

  
Roger Taylor auditioned for _Smile_ with the assistance of his first ever roadie.

His little harpist who could tune his father’s drums long before he started any lessons in school. Those finely-boned hands could fit in the tiniest places and tighten bolts quicker than the speed of light. The only hold-up was Roger’s need to reach down and tickle the little imp if he got too serious, the motion that left Morgan kicking his legs like a swimming frog and laughing till he tired himself out, flushed cheeks and bright eyes.

The two dark-haired blokes who came in after, seemed to be quite surprised that there was a living breathing child in their midst.

While Morgan was far more captivated with the dozen flower-pots set up in the corner. Talking to the blooms and blossoms, because _of course he was_.

“Who is…?”

“My son, Morgan. I’m Roger by the way, Roger Taylor.”

“Is he… talking to the flowers?”

“The daffodils. He thinks peonies are rude, and petunias are mean by proximity. But daffodils are always nice.”

A few moments later, after a rousing drum solo and two sets of judging eyes taking note of his every move, he had to peel his son off of Brian’s lap. The six-year-old had climbed into the wide-eyed guitarist’s personal space without prompting, tracing the dark-haired man’s face without asking. Smashing his own countenance, overly close to the young man’s, inches away from an eskimo kiss as he blinked those absurdly orchidian eyes. “Soft.” The little boy whispered with wonder.

 _“Ah, ah, ah!”_ Rog scooped up his sable-haired son, apology turning his ears red. “Shit, I’m sorry, he’s really tactile.”

He glared half-heartedly down at the boy in his arms. “We don’t climb on people without permission.” The little imp just blew a raspberry back up at him. Wriggling out of his father’s noodle arms to wiggle his nonexistent bum and plop down in front of the flowers again. Obnoxious little beast.

Roger just hadn’t expected Brian to follow, to twist up his legs until he resembled a fortune cookie or a cootie-catcher on the playground, in order to kneel beside his son and observe the flowers. “How old are you, Morgan?” The little boy seemed to appreciate the warmness and melody of his new found friend’s voice with the way he stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth. His head lolling to the side, batting his big lavender eyes.

“Really old…” His son did that thing where his eyes turned askance to study the smallest etchings of color on a cowslip petal. “I’m six.”

“ _Six?”_ Brian huffed a little laugh. “And that’s _really old?_ I must be _ancient_ then, I’m nearly twenty-three.”

The little boy wrinkled his nose and leaned over to lean his head on Brian’s shoulder. “Time is a funny thing, isn’t it?” A tiny smile.

A young Roger Taylor joined a band that day.

He left that room with his son’s fragile hand enveloped in his own, and with that same little hellion reaching out for Brian’s paw as well. Or to simply press a familiar toy soldier into his hand.

“This is for you, _Brimi Hendrix.” Their Jimi Hendrix._

Roger froze for an instant as those words left his son’s mouth, but as Brian and Tim seemed un-phased by it _(other than Brian’s cute little flush at such a compliment)_ the drummer shook it off. There was no way… _was there?_

_Oh yes, there certainly was._

  
-X-

  
“ _The fairies would not answer her_  
_The stones were dark and slept…”_

  
_-X-_

  
Brian wouldn’t find out what was inside the tin soldier, until the day he married the four loves of his life, in a ceremony of their own invention. His first son fixing his hair and settling a flower crown atop the curls. Not so little Morgan had made the crown himself, out of _pansy, wild thyme, cowslip and clover._ Brian’s nervous hands had been fiddling with the tin soldier in his keeping, his good luck charm, and had finally popped the thing open by accident, sending a little stone falling into his lap. A smooth stone with a hole in the middle.

“What’s this?” He hummed, moving to raise it to his eye.

But a plaintive little hand stopped him, those large periwinkle eyes filling with unexpected tears, a knowing grief. “Please don’t look through it.”

The older man’s lips had pursed in confusion, “But your father has one of these? And come to think of it, so do Fred and John. Why shouldn’t I look through?” But Morgan just tightened his hold.

“Please, Brimi. I want to be your son forever, I love being your son. But if you look through that lens, things won’t ever be the same.” _I won’t be your son anymore. You won’t want me to be your son anymore. I’ll be something else, something to be afraid of. Please don’t ever look._

“Morgan, nothing you say or do, could ever change the way I feel about you. You are my _son_ , Morrigan Taylor. My little _Eldritch Abomination._ ” The elfin boy laughed at the familiar nickname from his sweet Brimi. But still made it a point to slip the stone on a chain around Brian’s neck, not quite ready to be seen in all his true glory. “I love you.”

They laced fingers and not for the first time, Morgan wished his Brimi believed in such magic. _Believed in him._

“I love you too, Brimi May.”

  
-X-

  
_“A babe was all she asked for, and their promises they'd kept.”_

 

-X-

  
Little Morgan remembered the way he had curled up in bed with his Daddy as a small child.

Often looking over at his sleeping, shirtless father and seeing all the scars from his top surgery, pink and puckered, still marring his soft skin as his chest rose and fell. His father was rather self-conscious about them, but Morgan had always thought they looked pretty neat.

Still, the little fey child reached over and rubbed his green thumb over the marks, watching as magical runes and flower art bloomed over the once-scoured skin. _St. John’s Wort, clovers, primrose, thyme, and bluebells._ A painless tattoo of love.

“You are the most amazing Daddy in the whole wide world.”

The tiny boy snuggled down to sleep, one hand placed delicately, protectively, over his father’s heart.

He would leave a couple of squirrel bones on his father’s bedside table in the morning. His Daddy especially liked the intact skulls. They made him scream the loudest.

  
-X-

  
“ _The wind blows low and mournful_  
_Through the Strath of Dalnacreich…”_

  
_-_ X-

  
“Hello!”

Morrigan Taylor popped up in front of Freddie Bulsara, the dark-haired bloke had been watching the _Smile_ concert wholly enraptured and then was left wandering around aimlessly, trying to find the band, pockets bursting with crumpled notebook paper and smudged graphite, song lyrics without a band to sing them. Music wasn’t music unless it was heard, lyrics weren’t lyrics unless they were sung.

“Oh! Um… _hello.”_ The youth knelt until he was the same height as the little boy with bright periwinkle eyes and a pixie’s smile. “Did you need help with something? Are you lost?” Instinctively looking around to find the child’s parents.

The strange little child before him, with his long swishing black ponytail and pointed ears that stuck out almost wholly vertical, not even mentioning those odd violet eyes that never seemed to blink as they tracked Freddie’s every move, was rather unorthodox in appearance and demeanor. Though he himself had no room to judge _. (Although he did feel compelled to ask the little fairy-feller where Titania and Oberon were hiding)._

“No, but _you are!”_ He exclaimed with a child’s bluntness, as he slid a tiny pale hand into Freddie’s own.

“Follow me!” There was little room for choice as he marched them both along like the little plastic soldiers and pony calvary that he so often marched across the carpets at home.

Depositing his new Freddie right in front of the band’s crappy van, and the two displeased former-members of Smile, as their singer ( _his Uncle Tim)_ had just fucked off to join _Humpy Bong._

“Brimi, Daddy I found our new lead singer!”

Brian was quite surprised by the intrusion, but Roger wasn’t. His son’s oddities had stopped surprising him long ago, somewhere between swimming with kelpies in the middle of the night and knowing languages that Roger had never taught him. So forgive him the indifference. Sometimes, he even thought his little fey child was rewriting the world to fit all of them into it the way he wanted. 

Freddie Bulsara before the Mercury, had been open-mouthed in his own surprise, as Roger shot his son a furtive look. _Those teeth, beastie?_

A vehement nod.

Rog had still been unsure at first. 

But of course Morgan was right, Morgan was _always_ right.

The seven-year-old boy watched the whole scene play out in front of his lavender eyes with mock-interest, sitting half-curled and sleepy in the front seat. Within the hour, there was a new pillow to lay on in the van and the band had a lead singer once again.

All the while, Freddie had begun the process of learning to cope with being a soft place for the very clingy little demon baby who liked to sit up front.

“Does he always…?”

“Yes.”

“With everyone?”

“Yes.” _If he likes you._

Roger was so used to his child’s antics that he had grown monosyllabic. While Brian on the other hand, huffed a low laugh and rolled his eyes, dozing against the back window with his Red Special propped up in his lap instead of a baby. “Morgan likes to collect fathers, _welcome to the club.”_ Roger scowled.

As if on cue, the little boy let out a high-pitched hum and smushed his face into Freddie’s neck. “Not Daddy… _Bapuji._ ” Only at decibel level that they two could hear.

The young man’s eyes widened, how could the little boy have possibly _known?_

But he forcibly shrugged it off.

Just like he shrugged off the strange sensation of something moving underneath the back of the child’s jacket.

He simply resolved to hold both the child and his stuffed bear ever closer, the lumpy little thing that Morgan had dug out of his backpack and shoved it into Freddie’s thin arms, as though it had always belonged there.

  
-X-

  
“ _Where once there lived a woman_  
_Who would a mother be…”_

  
_-_ X-

  
Freddie didn’t find the stone until they were at Ridge Farm.

He had been idly toying with the small bear, drinking a morning coffee on the patio, watching as their little boy danced around in the new springtime blossoms and tall grass of the sprawling meadow outside their cottage.

The old bear had slid off his lap all at once, tearing open the slit on its side, the simple seeing stone rolling free in all its humble sheen. Freddie had hummed, picking it up with an inquisitive little stare. There was something oddly familiar about the rock. The same odd familiarity he often attributed to Morgan and spending time with their special little boy.

Their unique and precious little child who had inspired most of _Queen I_ and _Queen II_ by simply existing.

The oft stubborn child who wouldn’t sleep unless he was lulled there by one of them. Deaky in particular. Many of their songs had begun their life as Morgan’s lullabies.

Freddie raised the stone’s hole to his eye and had to stifle a scream into the back of his hand.

It would appear as if the world wasn’t always as black and white as it had seemed to his mortal eyes.

  
-X-

  
“ _For fifty years she rocked that babe_  
_it's said she rocks him still.”_

  
_-_ X-

  
John Deacon was the last to join their motley crew, he had auditioned in the ordinary way and impressed in the same way that Morgan had known he was going to.

He _knew_ things.

The same way he knew the boy on sight, knew _who and what_ that clever shy boy was going to become.

His fathers were impressed by the sheer moxie of the young bassist, never dropping a beat and being able to pick up a new original song and play it on command by ear without any perceived difficulty. He could _play_ anything, he could _build_ anything. That was what impressed his three fathers most of all, the three most important people in Morgan’s human life, since the _Unseelie Queen_ ’s baby had been stolen away by Seelie folk and gifted in tithe to a human.

But what impressed _Morgan_ about his Pa, was that when he passed the red twisty top into his fourth father’s hands…

Within moments, Deaky had the top open and was staring down at the seeing stone in confusion.

“What’s this?”

Morgan had just smiled, with too many teeth.

  
-X-

  
“ _A mother of a changeling child from 'neath the fairy hill.”_

  
_-_ X-

  
He had brought happiness to his mortal father.

The _tithe_ was repaid.

 

 


End file.
